The Boyfriend Collector, Two

by Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

  Fuck. Because now I believe him, and it hurts worse than the sharp pain in my chest.

  He adds, “Frank assures me your inheritance won’t be at risk, so you don’t have to worry. The necessary papers will be delivered to you in the morning. Sign them as soon as you’re able, and we can both move on.”

  There’s not much I can say, so I don’t. “Give my regards to your aunts. Please thank them for all the help.”

  “Of course. And be safe, Rose. Listen to Waylon. Just be careful that he’s not your chapter twenty-two.”

  The call ends, and I sit there in so much pain, I don’t know where I start and it ends. The wound in my chest is only one small part of the agony.

  And what the hell did he mean by Waylon being my chapter twenty-two? I think about it for a long, long moment. Chapter twenty-two in The Boyfriend Collector is where the heroine agrees to marry this guy who owns an autobody shop. She’s about to go through with the ceremony but catches him checking out her sister’s ass. She realizes that all of the rumors about his wandering eye are true and the man doesn’t really love her. He loves the idea of her. He holds her up so high on a pedestal that if she marries him, he believes he will be changed into a good person. It just doesn’t work that way. A leopard doesn’t change its spots by admiring a gazelle’s grace and beauty.

  “Everything okay?” Waylon enters the room, and I hand him back his phone.

  “No. Not really.”

  He takes the seat beside me. “Yeah. I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you about that. He made me promise. Gentleman’s code and all.”

  Uh-huh… “You guys seriously think I’m that stupid?”

  “Wha-what are you talking about?”

  “I’ve lived almost my entire life with two of the most manipulative, conniving, greedy people on the planet, and you honestly think I don’t know you’re both hiding something?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I’m here for you, Rose. Bex isn’t, and he has his reasons, but why should you doubt me?”

  I have to hand it to him. He’s good. “I’m so grateful that you came to save me, Waylon. I mean…wow. You obviously have a huge pair of balls, and I don’t think I will ever be able to repay you, but…” I shake my head. “Whatever deal you two idiots made was a waste of time. Only I get to decide who I love and who I share my life with. That’s not something to barter away.”

  He leans back in the chair and sighs remorsefully. “How’d you know?”

  “I didn’t. You just told me, but it wasn’t hard to guess. And, also, your lips turn down when you lie, and Bex’s voice sounds three octaves higher.”

  Waylon chuckles and then holds up his hands. “I guess I’m a better thief than I am a liar.”

  “Yes.”

  “But look at you, Rose. You’re beautiful, intelligent, and you just have this thing about you—the way you glow with life. You’re the most genuine person I’ve ever met and I, for one, love being around you.”

  “Waylon.” I reach out and squeeze his hand. “I know that there’s a lot of good in you, even if you do bad things, but it’s beneath you to try to steal someone’s heart.”

  “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  “Hell yes, I can. And I can blame a guy for not trying, too.” Bex just threw away our relationship because once again, he just had to be the hero who sacrifices everything for a noble cause.

  “He loves you, Rose. He was willing to give you up if it meant saving you. Most guys would just be selfish pricks and fight to the end, even if it meant you dying. They wouldn’t share you. Neither would I.”

  “The problem is, that’s just not your choice. And it’s not his either.” I shake my head in frustration. “What did you think would happen anyway? That I’d stop loving him and fall for you?”

  “All I wanted was a chance. That’s it. And hey, he was willing to walk away, so why wouldn’t I go for it? I am in love with you, Rose. I know how crazy that sounds, but I knew it the minute we met.”

  He’s right. He doesn’t know me. Gustavo didn’t know me. Markus and Chad and all the other guys I’ve gone out with didn’t know me. They just have this idea in their heads of who I am. The sad part for me is that the man who knows the real me is asking for a divorce. “I’d like you to go now.”

  “I can’t leave you alone—”

  “I’d rather be alone than with one more person who thinks manipulating me, even for my own good, is okay.” I’m miserable, in pain, and I’m tired of all these games. I’ve been kidnapped and battered by the same man twice in less than a month, and my life has been chewed up and put under a microscope by the media. Pretty much everything that could go wrong with my life has.

  Hey, at least I have my health. Sort of. I slide my hand over the aching, burning wound.

  Waylon bobs his head slowly, and I can see the remorse on his face.

  “I will always be grateful to you, Waylon. I can’t say it enough. But I’m done with fantasies—my own and everyone else’s.”

  I’m Rose Marie Hale. I have no clue what that means. I don’t know what the future holds. I only know I’ve made a lot of mistakes, mostly trusting the wrong people, but I’ve learned one thing out of all this: I can do this. On my own. What I’ve been through is proof.

  Bex

  Ending my marriage with Rose feels like a betrayal of everything I stand for. Here’s the fucked-up part: I just realized why.

  I’ve broken my promise to her—to be there no matter what and to be honest with her—in order to keep my word to a thief.

  Yes, the man must’ve called in a dozen favors to find Rose.

  Yes, I would have given up my own life to get her back.

  Yes, all I had to barter with was her, and I couldn’t have found Rose on my own. Gustavo did a good job of covering his tracks from the authorities, but not from the shady community of drug traffickers, gunrunners, and other criminals he frequently did business with. That’s how Waylon found out about the small plane Gustavo hitched a ride on to Puerto Rico. It was reported that he had an uncooperative, mouthy guest with him. From there, Waylon kept making calls, doing deals, and calling in favors. His efforts saved her, which means I did the right thing by agreeing to let her go, yet I can’t help feeling like the world’s biggest piece of shit for just handing her over like some trophy.

  I don’t want to divorce her. I never want to live without her. I just don’t know how she’s ever going to forgive me if I can’t even forgive myself.

  I call Frank and leave a message with his assistant, who said that the divorce papers already went out to Miami.

  Standing in my kitchen, I look down at Sophie. “What should I do?” Because I wasn’t lying when I said the board was reviewing my license. Nor was I being dishonest when I said that divorcing Rose, and making the argument that I was merely trying to help her through a very extreme situation, would help my case. But that is not why I’m looking at Sophie, my golden retriever. My hearing is in two hours. If I miss it, my license will be suspended. The board doesn’t take being blown off so lightly, and I will be placed on suspension until a full investigation has taken place. The hearing today is my only chance, albeit a small one, to explain my side of the story and prevent a shitstorm end to my career.

  Sophie’s big brown eyes are wide and fixed on my face. I know she’s just a dog, but there’s something to be said about animals being valuable tools when it comes to introspection.

  She barks at me, and I decide to take the meaning as an affirmation of what I’ve already decided.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Rose

  Roses are red. Violets are blue. Rose is on painkillers and men suck. I chuckle to myself in my hospital bed, fully aware that I have weeks of recovery ahead and that I’ll be spending my first Christmas and New Year’s as a free woman completely alone.

  Fine by me. I always said it was a bad idea to try to have a relationship with Bex when I had so much growing to do. I just never imagined I’d be trying to grow ne
w skin and some fragments of rib cage. “Owww…”

  “Uh-oh. You don’t sound good, sweetie.” Bob, the nurse, comes in and gives me a little pity stare.

  “Everything hurts,” I moan.

  “Generally happens when a knife is stuck in you.”

  He hands me the pain-med button thing that’s fallen to my side, but I pass. This medication sucks ass. All it does is make me sleepy, but the ache’s all there. Only, my mind is so lost, I’m swimming in dark thoughts instead of trying to cope with them. I seriously cannot wait for this wound to heal because when I get out of here, I’m going to travel, read books, and start school. I’m going to get all those degrees I dreamed about in Florence. Learn Italian. No. Wait. I’m going to learn five other languages. I’m never going to stop learning and living. My life. My way. I don’t need anyone else’s love to make me happy.

  It’s ironic that it took so much suffering to see things so clearly, but I am finally here. Inside my heart and mind, I have arrived home.

  Rose, I’d like you to meet your purpose. Purpose, meet Rose.

  “Rose?” A warm, strong hand grips mine. “It’s me, Bex.”

  “No, it’s not. Bex divorced me. He doesn’t love me,” I mutter through my haze of medication.

  “Bex is an idiot, but he loves you very much. More than you’ll ever possibly know. He also saw the courier outside and intercepted the divorce papers.”

  I try to focus and see whoever’s in front of me trying to sound like Bex.

  “Hello there.” He smiles warmly and brushes my hair off my forehead.

  “Are you really here?” I whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I think you know the answer.”

  “I don’t, actually.” I move to sit up a little, and he helps by placing a pillow behind my head.

  “I already talked to Waylon,” Bex says. “He told me you figured it all out.”

  My brain does this strange twisting action where it tries to grab the pieces of reality whirling in front of me. Ah. I remember. “You mean how you told him he could have me if he helped you rescue the damsel in distress?”

  He lifts my limp hand and places a kiss on top. “Yes.”

  It all comes back to me. The lies, the real-life heroism, yesterday’s words severing our ties.

  “You know what I was up against, then,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “And you know I would have given anything to save you.”

  I nod with a wince. “I do. And I’m grateful. But the problem isn’t any of that. Not really.” I try to open my eyes fully, and all I see is red. Roses fill the entire room. Top to bottom. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a little much, but I didn’t know how to say I’m sorry. I never should have—”

  “You did what you had to.”

  “Then?” he asks.

  “The problem isn’t how much you hurt me.”

  “But I didn’t mean to—”

  “I know. But, Bex, I can’t live my life like that—letting so much of my self-worth depend on what you think. You’ve devastated me. You’ve made me doubt if I am a good person, and it only made me realize that I have to figure out what’s worth loving about me. Not for you. Not for Mel or Gertie, like I tried to figure out for years. I need to love myself enough to feel it deep down in my bones.”

  He stares with glossy blue eyes, and I just somehow know he gets what I’m saying.

  I lift my hand and cup his rough cheek. “I have to figure this out.”

  He nods. “I know.”

  I’ve never seen a man as strong as Bex tear up. It only speaks to how much he cares.

  He lays his hand over mine. “I respect your decision, but I won’t divorce you.”

  “Huh?”

  He gives me that look—the one that tells me he’s not fucking around. “Hire an army of lawyers. Do whatever you want, Rose, but I’m going to fight you tooth and nail if you try to break up our marriage, and trust me when I tell you that my lawyers are animals. Plus, I have access to all your money, so I can hire just as many of them as you can.”

  “Wha…”

  He grins, and it’s a smile that glows from deep inside him. What he’s really saying is that he’s not going to call it quits until I’ve had time to figure it all out. In a funny way, he and I are back to square one. Only this time, we’re being honest with not only ourselves but with each other, too. I’m not walking around wounded by his rejection. He’s not trying to hide his feelings behind that wall.

  “Sure. Okay.”

  “I only ask, Rose, that you save yourself for—”

  “That’s not fair. I can’t—”

  “For the right man,” he interrupts. “Save yourself for the right man. If he happens to me, then nothing will make me happier.”

  Right now, even as miserable as I feel, I still want him. I want to kiss his sinful lips. I want to feel his hot breath on my neck when he’s inside me for the first time. I want all of him. I can’t see that going away. Sadly, though, it changes nothing. I can’t spend my life feeling so damned weak, and he can’t fix me.

  “I promise,” I say.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It’s been over five months since I last saw Bex, though he and I talk on the phone two or three times a week. I know, it’s a little crazy, but I never denied my feelings for him. I just needed time to find a way to love myself, too, and I think I’ve made progress.

  Wait. I know I have.

  But I didn’t find any of it while backpacking through Europe for three weeks. I didn’t find it in a two-thousand-year-old ruin in southern Mexico, or in the satisfaction of having applied to Columbia University for the fall and being accepted into their English lit program. I didn’t even find it in the sense of pride I felt when the mansion opened up just this week as a home for girls, or when I was offered six figures for my story, which I get to write if I choose. Ironically, I found what I needed from the publisher who made the offer and who handles my mother’s books. While she never personally worked with my mother, she said she was one hundred percent certain that my mother didn’t write her last book, The Boyfriend Collector.

  A ghost writer. Yes. A ghost writer!

  My mom hadn’t been well after she got pregnant and couldn’t finish the book as planned. She’d only had the first two chapters done. The publisher, desperate to make their sales numbers, got my mother to agree to use a ghost writer. How or why they all decided to release a book that had no happy ending—the heroine dying alone and a trail of broken hearts left behind—my publisher wasn’t sure. All she could tell me is that to this day The Boyfriend Collector is still referred to as the biggest fuck-up in the history of their publishing house. They would have pulled it, but readers still buy the damned thing because everyone thinks there’s a hidden meaning in it. They even have an online book club slash conspiracy group.

  Well, mystery solved. She didn’t write the story, and the book somehow got green-lighted to publish with my mother’s name on it. A mistake made by one person who was desperate to get their quarterly bonus.

  It’s strange how that single piece of information changed everything for me. I finally feel like I know my mother and understand her. She really was all about love. She believed it could heal people, make them stronger and kinder. She believed that a life without it was meaningless. I suppose that’s why she never turned her back on Mel and Gertie. My mother would have tried to see the good in them, like I saw the good in Waylon and every one of the men I’ve met along the way. Maybe my mother was the only one in the world who truly loved those two assholes and that’s why they were so devastated by the loss of her. They had no one else. Not even their own daughter, Belinda, loves them.

  Monsters need love, too, I guess. I hope they find it wherever they’re currently living, because if they step one foot back here on US soil, they’re going to be arrested again. Belinda ratted them out in exchange for leniency. Apparently, she, Mel, and Ger
tie were stealing from more than just me. They had some real estate scam going with a developer, where they sold a bunch of luxury villas in the Virgin Islands to my grandparents’ rich friends. Apparently, the builder took his sweet time finishing the job, which allowed them to sell the same villa to twenty different people for a million dollars each. There are thirty villas. Their greed and scheming know no bounds.

  As for me, I know so much more than I did a year ago, or even five months ago. No, I still don’t know who I am, not entirely, but I do know it’s time to start putting the past behind me.

  Time to move on. And I have to break the news to my husband.

  Bex

  Rose called this morning to tell me she’s back in Atlanta and needs to see me. We’ve kept in touch since I saw her in Miami last, but the conversations are always kept light. At least for her. Because every time I hear her voice, it feels like a lead weight inside my chest. I want her back. I want to hold her and kiss her and make her my real wife.

  I hope tonight she’s going to say she’s ready to start a new life with me. She can go to school here in Atlanta; I can work on building my practice; we can be happy together.

  I enter the lobby of the hotel downtown. Rose apparently gave up her apartment because too many paparazzi knew where she lived, and she figured it was a waste of money while she was traveling. Fine by me. She can move in with Sophie and me.

  I take the elevator, and I push the button to the tenth floor. It’s just one more thing I love about Rose. She can afford the penthouse or to keep her apartment forever, but she’s never been about money. She certainly doesn’t believe in wasting it. The damned woman is worth hundreds of millions and she stayed at youth hostels with bunk beds and communal bathrooms while she traveled through Europe. Heck, she stayed in huts while traveling through Central America and southern Mexico.

  The door starts to close, but a hand darts in and stops it. I look and it’s Rose, standing there in a short red summer dress. She’s wearing black sandals, and her long blonde hair is down around her shoulders. She looks breathtaking.